(ABC News) Exclusive: Skyrocketing Heroin, Opium Use Ensnaring Afghan Children

[sabra]

Source: ABC News

State Department Finds Kids' Exposure to Drugs Could Create 'Whole Generation' of Addicts in Afghanistan


Staggering levels of opium and heroin have been detected in Afghan children as young as 14 months by a team of researchers hired by the US State Department, revealing a fast-emerging problem that could cripple American efforts to bring stability to the war-torn country.

"I think we've opened a can of worms," said Bruce Goldberger, one of the University of Florida scientists heading up the study, who spoke exclusively with Brian Ross for a report airing on World News with Diane Sawyer and Nightline tonight. "This was just totally unexpected. No one has ever seen this type of exposure in young children. It's never been documented. And it's laying a foundation for drug abuse for a whole generation."

This first-ever look at household exposure to opium and heroin is not yet complete, but State Department officials and contractors shared preliminary findings exclusively with ABC News in hopes of drawing attention to a problem they say has been largely overlooked. The researchers said what they uncovered is both shocking and tragic.

...

A fact sheet prepared by the State Department has some of the raw numbers: In 31 of 42 homes where adult addicts lived, children tested showed signs of significant drug exposure.

Both American and Afghan counter narcotics officials said this is a new problem for the country. Afghanistan has for many years been a primary source of opium for the rest of the world. But only in recent years, as refugees from war fled to Pakistan and Iran, did a significant number of Afghans start using the drugs themselves. When they returned home, they brought both drug use and its noxious byproducts back with them, said Doug Wankel, who spent decades as the DEA's top man in Afghanistan and is now based in Kabul for the U.S. consulting firm, Spectre Group International.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/WorldNews/exclusive-skyrocketing-heroin-opium-ensnaring-afghan-children/story?id=10423575

[no limit]

1. How sad

[EFerrari]

2. Translation: Spectre Group International and State are negotiating

a no bid contract and need a narrative to implement the rip off.

[BakedAtAMileHigh]

3. the Taliban eliminated opium production

before we moved in. Hooray, freedumb!

[kirby]

10. The also eliminated all the other rights...

Except what was dictated by Sharia law.

[BakedAtAMileHigh]

20. so why aren't you over there

kicking fundamentalist ass and giving the Afghani people the same freedumb you enjoy?

[aquart]

4. Why not? It's not like they have hope or a future.

First Russia, then the US trampling all over them. And we have no intention of leaving.

Then we have the brass balls to talk about "training" them. THEY know how to live in their own country. We haven't a clue.

[Arctic Dave]

8. Or mental health facilities. We seem to forget they deal with this occupation

EVERYDAY. Everyone falls all over themselves feeling sorry for the troops when they come back because of the stress they have.

[JDPriestly]

5. This reminds me of Viet Nam. Our troops will bring home addiction.

Just wait and see. This is the untold story of the Viet Nam War. Some, by no means all, probably not most, came back seriously addicted to drugs. Many soldiers' lives were destroyed by drug addiction.

[Better Today]

6. "No one has ever seen this type of exposure in young children." I don't think so.

This can't be true. I remember reading about Poland's heroin/poppy problems back a couple of decades wherein it described young mothers who were regularly putting heroin on babies' pacifiers so they'd remain quiet during the mother's heroin usage.

I agree it's horrendous, but it isn't not a "never seen" before type situation.

It was in print, in a magazine, I'll see if I can find on on-line archive of some sort.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

7. RT story an Afghan families.

http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-03-28/afghanistan-families-drug-addicted.html

Horrific tale of Afghan family addiction a sad metaphor for casualties of war
permalinke-mail story to a friendprint versionPublished 28 March, 2010, 08:36

The Russia-NATO Council is meeting in Brussels Wednesday to discuss ways of reducing or eliminating drug production in Afghanistan. But as politicians talk, people continue to suffer from prospering drug business.

Russia is facing a crisis, with an estimated 2.5 million addicts – more than any other country in the world – and 90 per cent of them use cheap Afghan heroin.

Moscow estimates narcotics production in Afghanistan has increased 44 times since the US-led war started in 2001. It says coalition forces are just not doing enough to eradicate the problem. And drugs production remains a major source of income for Taliban militants.

[robdogbucky]

9. Is any of this a surprise to any of us?

This is just part of the same phenomena with the fighting forces from Afghanistan:

Those figures cited in the post above about addiction in Afghanistan since 2001 is really sad.



Video: Afghanistan’s Toking Troops Not Exactly Battle-Ready

"Top NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal calls training local soldiers and cops “our main effort” in Afghanistan. But whipping recruits into shape is a whole lot harder when they’re stoned out of their minds.

“You walk into a whole squad of ANA smoking hashish. They don’t understand that the use of drugs, it effects the way that they accomplish their mission,” says one disgusted marine. “Soldiers come out without helmets, soldiers come out missing a lot of gear.”

Obviously, there are plenty of units that are more professional. But this isn’t the first time red-eyed Afghan troops have been caught on tape..."

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/12/video-afghanistans-toking-troops-not-exactly-battle-ready/





Just my dos centavos


robdogbucky

[maxsolomon]

11. legalize it, purchase the crops for 2x what the taliban pays,

take the processed opium and the heroin and use it as medicine - it works super great to alleviate pain. or destroy it - either way the farmers have a reason to like our presence there - more $.

same with the hashish.

[TheMadMonk]

13. Now why the hell would anyone want to do that?

America (or certain interests within) thrives on the drug trade.

Also pushing the price higher would have no effect. Up to a point the cartels would adsorb the higher wholesale price, and then just start pushing the street prices up.

[mikeSchmuckabee]

12. Buffalo Bill's

defunct..

how do you like your blueeyed freedom
Mister Death

[Doctor_J]

14. We're makin' progress

- Il Dunce'

[Dr Fate]

15. Oh well-can't make an omlette w/o breaking a few eggs!

It's The "Necessary War", ya know!

[RainMickey]

16. This is the shrub's fault. n/t

[Bragi]

17. From here on in, it's Obama's doing

Obama is wrong on this war, and now owns all the bad shit that will go down there.

This will include responsibility for the additional deaths of U.S troops and Afgahns arising from McChrystal's planned summer bloodbath in Kandahar province.

[Doctor_J]

18. Yep. He picked up the mortgage on this folly

the biggest disappointment of all.

[Uncle Joe]

19. A little Western opium history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium

Latin translation of Avicenna's Canon of Medicine, 1483
Opium became stigmatized in Europe during the Inquisition as a Middle Eastern influence and became a taboo subject in Europe from approximately 1300 to 1500 CE. Manuscripts of Pseudo-Apuleius's fifth-century work from the tenth and eleventh centuries refer to the use of wild poppy Papaver agreste or Papaver rhoeas (identified as Papaver silvaticum) instead of Papaver somniferum for inducing sleep and relieving pain.<19>

The use of Paracelsus' laudanum was introduced to Western medicine in 1527, when Philip Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, better known by the name Paracelsus, returned from his wanderings in Arabia with a famous sword, within the pommel of which he kept "Stones of Immortality" compounded from opium thebaicum, citrus juice, and "quintessence of gold."<7><20><21> The name "Paracelsus" was a pseudonym signifying him the equal or better of Aulus Cornelius Celsus, whose text, which described the use of opium or a similar preparation, had recently been translated and reintroduced to medieval Europe.<22> The Canon of Medicine, the standard medical textbook that Paracelsus burned in a public bonfire three weeks after being appointed professor at the University of Basel, also described the use of opium, though many Latin translations were of poor quality.<20> Laudanum was originally the sixteenth-century term for a medicine associated with a particular physician that was widely well-regarded, but became standardized as "tincture of opium," a solution of opium in ethyl alcohol, which Paracelsus has been credited with developing. During his lifetime, Paracelsus was viewed as an adventurer who challenged the theories and mercenary motives of contemporary medicine with dangerous chemical therapies, but his therapies marked a turning point in Western medicine.

In the seventeenth century laudanum was recommended for pain, sleeplessness, and diarrhea by Thomas Sydenham,<23> the renowned "father of English medicine" or "English Hippocrates," to whom is attributed the quote, "Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium."<24> Use of opium as a cure-all was reflected in the formulation of mithridatium described in the 1728 Chambers Cyclopedia, which included true opium in the mixture. Subsequently, laudanum became the basis of many popular patent medicines of the nineteenth century.

The standard medical use of opium persisted well into the nineteenth century. U.S. president William Henry Harrison was treated with opium in 1841, and in the American Civil War, the Union Army used 2.8 million ounces of opium tincture and powder and about 500,000 opium pills.<4> During this time of popularity, users called opium "God's Own Medicine."<25>

The most important reason for the increase in opiate consumption in the United States during the 19th century was the prescribing and dispensing of legal opiates by physicians and pharmacist to women with ”female problems” (mostly to relieve painful menstruation. Between 150,000 and 200,000 opiate addicts lived in the United States in the late 19th century and between two-thirds and three-quarters of these addicts were women.<26>

Thanks for the thread, sabra.